Saturday, 10 July 2010

Lucy Cope - backstory

Followed from the shooting of her son Damian in 2002 by the unstable drug dealer Andrew Wanoghu, Lucy Cope became a campaigner against gun usage. She has achieved considerable news coverage for her campaign "Mothers Against Guns" by appearing at conferences, giving quotes and generating stories for both local and national media.

There is no formal charity under the name "Mothers Against Guns" listed with the Charities Commission and the charitable limited company which existed under that name (no. 05915867)was dissolved in 2008, having previously been registered for two years to an accountant's address, so it is not clear how the campaign is currently funded. There may have been some funding in 2004 via the Connected Fund operated by the Home Office, but that has ended now.

This week an Freedom of Information request (FOI) revealed that Bedfordshire police had granted shotgun licences to children. The story does not say who raised the FOI. The Daily Mail article contained material inaccuracies about gun ownership and licencing, as various people have pointed out, but this is a good headline and media quickly took the story up.

The BBC regional TV news handled the story more carefully than most and interviewed the police, a young sports man and a supervisor at a gun training centre. As various gun-users have pointed out, a gun is just another tool used in competition shooting, pest control and hunting. They need careful handling as they have special risks attached to them, but they are just another tool. The police did extensive checks and interviews before granting the licences. All the conditions are being complied with. Despite the splash of the story this week, it has been covered before. Fiona McPherson for BBC South East addressed the subject in a balanced manner in December 2009. Just for once, everybody was doing their job properly, even the BBC.

It's impossible to have anything but sympathy for Lucy Cope, but when it emerged that she also had another son stabbed to death, it raised the query: Why is she focusing on the guns when the problem seems to be the propensity of young men to get involved in crime and kill each other?

Time then to look at the Lucy Cope back story, particularly when prompted by a commenter on Ambush Predator, that there might be competing explanations for the number of deaths in the Cope family.

Lucy Cope is quoted as age 55, which means she was born in 1955 at the end of the 'baby boomer' cohort. She has briefly described a childhood in coastal Ayrshire up to the age of 14, which although perhaps difficult by today's standards, was within the standards of the time.

Her description of her father as "a violent man" has to stand, but it should be noted that he's not here to dispute it. By the late 60s the mines in Ayrshire were closing because oil was coming on stream, imported coal was cheaper and electricity from nuclear generation was being brought on. Mr James Sillars, MP (South Ayrshire) and other concerned MPs a summarized the history of it in Hansard on 2 Feb 1977. (At that point, Sillars reveals were are 43,000 temporary jobs created in the area to keep people off the unemployment register.)

In approximately 1969 at age 14, Lucy Cope was therefore moved by her father to Nottingham, presumably so that he could find work in mining, but she does not state that was his job. At age 17 she met and married Winston, moving to London four years later at the age of 21 to live in Peckham in the estates which are fictionalized in the comedy Only Fools and Horses. Although Cope was a little young, by the standards of 1976 a married 21 year old was not unusual. They had six boys. (Cope subsequently went on to have two younger daughters).

The reality was darker than either the popular series - which began in 1981 - or Cope herself reflects.

"There used to be the old school criminality that did ruthless things but they had a mark of respect that they wouldn’t go over."

Time puts mellow rosy glasses on us all when looking back at it. By 1985 there were serious challenges to the policing of London, particularly in estates such as Broadwater Farm (Tottenham), where the authority of the police to enforce UK law was being tested at a cultural level. Crime was half the equation; a severe confusion was arising as to whether the police had any right at all to enter those areas and enforce the law of the land, as evidenced by the widely-condemned statement from Bernie Grant (council leader and subsequently an MP)

"The youths around here believe the police were to blame for what happened on Sunday and what they got was a bloody good hiding."

Cope's life story seems to have been quiet enough - or at least, as quiet as it gets when having six boys - from her meeting with Winston in 1972 up until roughly the mid-1980s. Then, on a date not specified and for reasons not stated, Cope recounts:

"When I was 17, I married Winston, a wonderful Jamaican man. He was my soul mate. We had six boys. Life seemed great. Then he jumped off the block of flats where we lived. The kids were small; they saw it happen."

There is no readily available information on what appears to have been a dreadful suicide, but it might partly explain the tensions which then developed in the Cope family. By 1998 something had gone badly wrong. Sean Cope, her son, was stabbed to death close to Cope's home. However, there is surprisingly little information on this, which may be simply down to the date as internet sources are only gradually being added from that time. If the local paper covered it, it might be in their archives. However, a commentator on Ambush Predator writes:

"his death is described in more detail elsewhere as a "family accident" and that another brother, Michael, stood trial three times for it before eventually being cleared of manslaughter and murder. IIRC from when I lived in the area and followed the incident in the local press, there wasn't any dispute that Michael's hand was on the knife".

Sean Cope has been air-brushed almost out of the picture in a way that Damian has not. He is left there, in outline, inviting us to conclude that random tragedy has struck twice, whereas if he died as a result of scrapping within his own family, and if it should transpire that Sean himself had a violent background, these are much more relevant explanations than the guns, knives, garrotes or chair legs with which they kill each other. The weapon is only "how" they do it; to cut down the numbers you have to tackle the whys and wherefores.

There is another chapter in the Cope story.

When Damian was killed, there was little doubt about the identity of the murderer, but there was doubt about whether a successful case could be brought. There was CCTV footage of Damian being shot but what the prosecution needed - a positive identification of the murderer - hung on two witnesses being prepared to name him.

Although the CPS went to the effort of extraditing Andrew Wanoghu from the USA and putting him on trial in 2004 as a one of a sequence in Operation Trident in an effort to stem gang violence, their case was always weak in respect of identification and relied on the witness claiming to have heard the name from the dying lips of Damian Cope. It was hearsay from someone now far beyond the reaches of human justice. Although Lucy Cope claimed credit for pressurizing the CPS in to bringing the case, the police were anxious to crack the gangs and an extradition might have helped that.

Despite this, counsel for the prosecution was obliged to withdraw when the witnesses would not testify. The friend was, in the end, more frightened of reprisals than contempt of court.

Another problem was that it was claimed that Mr Cope named his killer to Witness A seven minutes after the shooting. But medical experts from prosecution and defence believe his injuries were so serious that he would have been rendered incapable of speech almost immediately. "Each doctor independently came to the view that because of the injuries Damian Cope suffered is it unlikely in the extreme that he would have been in a position to have a conversation with Witness A," said Mr Horwell. A doorman at the club claimed that Mr Cope did not utter a word." "We couldn't invite a jury to convict on Witness A's evidence", said Mr Horwell. "There is not a realistic prospect of conviction and for these reasons we offer no evidence on the indictment."

This opens the possibility that witnesses (there is no doubt they were there) perhaps interpreted-in an event which did not happen and on reflection did not wish to say something untrue in the witness box because that is also a very serious offence. To have a witness take the stand and admit that they might have embroidered their story would have destroyed the prosecution humiliatingly in open court.

It's a technical call as to whether that trial should ever have gone forward but at least it showed that there was a will in the CPS to bring someone before the courts. But if Richard Horwell QC tells you that you haven't got a case and he can't bring it in, then you are being told by one of the best in the business.

Cope was distraught, as is natural when faced by an insolent little git who was getting off on having the CCTV of Damian's death replayed for the jury and moreover was a guilty as heck.

Even if the friends has sworn on a stack of bibles, the defence would have questioned whether the dying Damian Cope had identified the killer or merely said a name. The prosecution had to fold for lack of convincing evidence.

The twist is this.

In 2007 Lucy Cope herself faced charges of kidnapping and assault against her nephew, Harry Kerr. Cope suspected Kerr of stealing property of sentimental value and rang her sister to complain. Kerr then complained to the police that he'd been pulled out of a pub by his cousins Darren and Adrian (Cope's sons) and held at Cope's house and beaten.

The case collapsed and she was formally cleared when the key witness, the victim Harry Kerr, could not be found to testify. The police also wished to speak to Kerr in respect of other matters and were hoping he would make an appearance. Apparently he no longer wished to talk to them. The trial at the Inner London Crown Court was abandoned for lack of evidence . Cope insists that none of what Kerr alleged ever happened.

"In one way her court ordeal was an extension of the emotional nightmare she has endured since July 28, 2002. In another sense it has benefited Lucy, serving to increase her motivation for the campaign she began almost in a frenzied reaction to her son's death."

This is not to invalidate any points about gun control which Cope is making, but it should be taken in to account that her drive is primarily emotional. A husband she loved killed himself, there was bad blood between two sons which may have resulted in the death of one of them, two sons were due to stand trial for kidnapping and assault, although they were formally acquitted when the case collapsed for lack of evidence, a nephew has gone missing rather than answer police questions, property has vanished, and elsewhere Cope has referred to a difficult relationship with one of her daughters. Not that it is unusual to have a serious falling-out with a teenage daughter, but Cope claims that the police failed to take action when her clearly under-age child of twelve was having sexual relations with a 16 year old and did not treat this as abuse merely because the perpetrator was himself young.

Put all of that together and you have a woman who is driven to try to control one aspect, just one aspect, of a life which tipped further in to chaos when a son she loved deeply was shot. As Cope told John Woodcock:

"Part of you does die too. I could have gone right under. If I hadn't got involved in something to try and help stop what's happening on the streets, Damian would have died for nothing".

22 comments:

Thank you Anna. The police (Operation Trident) and the CPS had an awful job trying to solve and prosecute the later Wanoghu killing. He was lured by an ex-girlfriend to a place where he was shot on the orders of a life-long "friend".

The police complained of running in to a "wall of silence" but it was partly because Wanoghu had so many enemies that all the reaction they could get was "good riddance". A murder mystery and no mistake.

They persisted and established that Nicholas had ordered the killing from his prison cell via a mobile phone. Even then, remarkably, half the defendants managed to be acquitted, but Nicholas and Dennie received long sentences. (Whether they'll serve them is another matter).

The police persisted with the case and established that the murder weapon was a "travelling gun", associated with at least four other crimes. The object is shared by many people specifically to make it much harder to establish posession.

The issue is whether one is a member of the library and therefore has access to a loan. The quid pro quo of this is that if one is required to hide a "book" for a while, one is honour-bound to do so and thereby instantly implicated in any of the crimes the "book" has been involved in.

Yes, people are intimidated by gang members - the classic gangland technique Lucy Cope thinks of - but that's only a relatively small force. A much stronger binding is commonality and the sense of "us and them". The travelling guns work remarkably like fantasy "rings of power" with the ability to bind otherwise reasonably law-abiding people in to a dark compact.

Damian Cope fell out with Andrew Wanoghu earlier in the day when Wanoghu was showing off his gun in the park. Cope told him to put it away and Wanoghu was offended by being told what to do in front of the people he wished to impress. As he had a famously foul temper - which was how he came to fall out with his mate Nicholas - he simply resolved to kill Cope and show he could get away with it. Which he did.

The point is, Cope didn't immediately go to the police when he knew Wanoghu had a gun. He knew what Wanoghu did for a living, but he didn't go to the police with his intelligence, and I doubt whether anything would have persuaded him to testify, should the police have been building a case against Wanoghu on other grounds.

"Yes, people are intimidated by gang members - the classic gangland technique Lucy Cope thinks of - but that's only a relatively small force. A much stronger binding is commonality and the sense of "us and them". "

It does seem, lately, that the old definitions of 'us' and 'them' are shifting rapidly into something quite unwelcome...

For all that Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company is easy to poke fun at because she insists on dressing like an inflated Carmen Miranda and is such a soggy old hippy, she appears to be trying in a practical way to break the link between violence and status in that area of London.

I don't reckon her methods will work - I'm much more inclined that your proposals for drug regulation and control will do that - but maybe I'm too pessimistic.

Perhaps the practical interventions will do some good and harm nobody. At any rate, Batmanghelidjh appears to be doing more than fulminating about banning something. It's not that she approves of guns or knives; just that she doesn't think that will help, whereas cleaning up a flat might, even if the occupants have already blown one lot of benefits.

It's worth a try. In fact, a lot of what Kids Company does fits within DK's examples of mutuality, although KC also solicits state funding.

However, hats off to Lucy Cope. Armed with little more than a phone and Facebook page, she has consistently held the attention of the national media. That's no mean trick and the day she wants to do commercial PR she should easily find a paying gig.

The Sean Cope killing was covered in depth in the Southwark News. Don't think there's anything on line from the time, but some detail below.

http://www.southwarknews.co.uk/00,news,6540,6104,00.htm

Oddly, while the article mentions Michael as the brother that stood trial for killing Sean, there is no "Michael" in the list of six sons. Also very odd is that Winston Cope is described - in an in-depth interview with Lucy Cope - as having died of sickle cell disease rather than having jumped off a block of flats. Could just be bad journalism though.

Winston Lloyd Cope's birth was registered on 23 April 1955, marriage to Lucy M Kerr in March 1987, and death in December 1990.

A Sean Alan Cope died in 1999 who was born in 1974. Jonathan Lloyd Cope was registered in 1977. Darren Lee Cope in 1978. Damian Henry Cope in 1980 with his death registered in Nov 2003. Tristan Samuel Cope in 1985. Paisley Lucille Cope in 1994. Parice Anne G Cope in 1996. Couldn't find an Adrian or Michael.

All data from publically available online genealogy sources. No confirmation of accuracy of data. Southwark News article used as guide in finding records.

Thank you Anon and SadButMadLad. The name of the paper is useful. What a good idea to cross-check the genealogy.

The management of sickle cell anaemia is better now than it was twenty years ago. Perhaps Winston Cope had a particularly painful version and succumbed to depression. The journalist can only go by what the interviewer tells them at the time, or maybe the long version of the story wasn't relevant to that piece.

The key mystery is still Michael who is definitely described as Sean's brother - which could mean Sean's half-brother by an earlier partner of Winston Cope's.

"The paper began life in 1987 as the Bermondsey News, which was run in conjunction with a press agency – South East News. While the press agency was eventually wound up, the Bermondsey News continued, moving from printed A4 sheets, to magazine format, to tabloid in 1989. At the start of the 1990s it became the Southwark and Bermondsey News before finally becoming the Southwark News."

so the relevant editions are probably in the British Library's newspaper archive. The archive is being moved to Boston Spa (near Whetherby) and much more material will be digitized.

I would like to know where you get your so called facts from? As a close person to this family in question I can't believe the amount of untrue and fabricated bull crap I'm reading. And is most of the stuff you have wrote even legal?

The post from the blogger is fully sourced, with all relevant links highlighted. The main source appears to be Lucy Cope herself, in interviews she has given to a number of publications and media outlets.

What exactly do you take issue with? And what do you mean by querying the legality? Are you versed in the law of defamation?

These are genuine questions, I would be interested in anything you can add.

Reading this just confirms how society have so much time to discuss other people is Lucy copes personal life any of anyone's business? She lost two children and she tried her best not to let her son die in vain thus trying to raise more awareness in regards to gun crime. Her family and children's lives have nothing to do with any of you. This is why we are in the state we are in as a human race always out to destroy others none of your comments are positive you've just gone and sought information on someone you don't know why? Your own lives must be lacking in order for you to care in depth so much about someone you do not know. Do you not have jobs lives families to look after? Instead you choose to delve into other people's lives. Not one of you who have posted negative things are perfect you all have dark deep secrets and you know it but it makes you feel better by pointing out other people's faults. Listen to you woman on a raft I suggest you focus on your own life paddle that raft real far away find yourself and stop researching other people is there a reason your so interested in Lucy cope? Do you know her personally? You could of just called her if you wanted answers instead of trying to publicly act like you know anything that wasn't sourced online or in papers we all know how media works as you stated your big words don't fool me your a sad sad woman who has an agenda your no journalist give it up

She n her kids were nightmares. Thats exactly why she never mentions sean cos johnathan killed him right at the bottom of the block they lived in... stabbed him through the heart i think it was. obviously they made up michael to protect johnathon as she didnt want to press charges on johnathon anyway. As she didnt want to lose another son. Adrian was a nightmare too from he was a child. They wasnt a nice family at all. And they never all had the same dad either, not including her daughters.

It proberly was because she doesn't much mention sean but does Damien. 2 son's died not 1. She don't mention sean cos her other son killed him. Not being funny but all the publicity she did makes it ppl's business. If it's out there it's ppl's right to discuss it.